Relationship: Family, friends, co-workers, bosses, the strongman maintains a number of connections around Freedom City that could end up in all kinds of trouble.

I'd wrap that into Silverback's Motivation. Please name and provide a quick introduction to an individual that would be especially close to Hubert. (May very well produce plenty of HP in future.) Also tell me if that individual is aware of the secret identity.

Is Hubert still working in the steel mill? Where is he living?

All:I have enough to start working on the introductory post. I should have the IC thread up and running shortly after we get answers to the last few questions.

I've updated the Black Blade's character sheet with his Secret Complication (steals from the bad guys to fund his crime fighting exploits), as well as going with the idea he's back in WW2 (from 2014) due to a dimensional accident.

robertness wrote:Please name and provide a quick introduction to an individual that would be especially close to Hubert. (May very well produce plenty of HP in future.) Also tell me if that individual is aware of the secret identity.

Is Hubert still working in the steel mill? Where is he living?

Claudia Sherman, a confident woman who buckles the conventions of her time through rigorous training and no small ability in the mystic arts, her family having been one of the few Gypsy bloodlines with access to that sort of power. Unfortunately, an unwillingness to cooperate with acting as weapons and spies during the war scattered them to the winds, forcing them to practice their arts in secret, Claudia having never experienced the horrors of war first-hand.

Originally the family of Romanians and the old French soldier simply lived in the same building, but it was when Hubert helped to race Claudia's mother and father to the hospital when their car broke down and then assisted in paying for the fees, that they became close friends. Pulling the withdrawn soldier out of his self-imposed isolation. He was the one who taught little Claudia, and her family, more practical methods of self-defense, incorporating them with the ritualized dances that had once been deceptively deadly, and had withered over time into mere showpieces. The young girl has grown into a fun-loving tomboy who's entrance into the working world is hampered by a desire to use her extraordinary gifts more freely,

Hubert's transformation has made him into a guardian of the European immigrant district known as The Old Neighborhoods, a place where one can find a mixture of the old striving to hold on to their heritage and the young attempting to embrace their new homeland. His needs are provided for and in turn he helps people with their problems, both criminal and mundane, living on the top floor of an apartment building, adjusted to suit a man of such unique features.

In other words, it's less that she knows his secret identity, than he knows about her abilities. And I figure a hard-knocks entrance into the superhero gig by Claudia is just the thing to get my character a series of ever-increasing headaches.

Everyone's intro post has been sent. I'm not the best writer in the world, so please PM me if something isn't making sense. As these weren't public posts, we can tweak anything that doesn't fit your character concept as well.

robertness wrote:That will come in time (as in phase 3 of our first adventure). America's only been at war for two weeks, so these things are still being organized.

Okay, I deleted that bit; I also tweaked her Motivation a bit, though maybe I should phrase it as Duty?

robertness wrote:Andrew Orlando and the Never-Ending Story bookstore will fit into this setting if you'd like to give Griz a base of operations.

I like what you did in the PM, so I went ahead and added that section from her previous version to her new sheet, and added a few more period details and fun weblinks. I've been a fan of old-time radio since I was kid, so that kind of thing makes me smile.

robertness wrote:It's up to you and dreamking to determine if Adrian Eldrich is the wizard Grisselda followed out of Avalon and if he's aware she tagged along.

It's not terribly important, but if dreamking is down with it, so am I.

I'll give a quick run down on old school phone numbers for the uninitiated. Comes complete with an explanation of why there are letters on your phone!

In the 1940s, there were plenty of phones in use that did not have dials. (Heritage, the phone at Aunt Gladys's is one of these.) And those of us who first used rotary dials remember what a hassle waiting for each number to click through its cycle before you could dial another number was. Most of us can probably punch a ten digit phone number in a touch pad phone in the time it would take to dial the first three numbers on a rotary. Thus, most phone calls at this time were completed by (semi-)courteous and (somewhat) efficient operators.

To make the operators' jobs easier, the first part of a phone number was the exchange prefix which was represented by the first two letters of an easily recognized word. Each exchange would be represented by a socket in the operator's switch board. That's what the operator is doing when she plugs in the wire in the old movies, connecting the caller's line to the desired exchange. Then the operator would press some buttons to connect the caller to the proper line within the exchange.

When the rotary phone was introduced, they assigned letters to the phone so you could dial the exchange yourself. As a modern phone number, TOwnsend 75309 would be 867-5309. Yes, I'm a 1980s music geek as well....

The most famous phone number of this era is probably PEnnsylvania 6-5000, the number of the hotel Glen Miller's orchestra performed at. The song of that name was essentially an ad so radio listeners could get tickets for next week's concert.

Now that you all have been brought up to speed on old time phone numbers, I'll allow you to change your posts so your characters are appropriately hep to the jive.

I would have gone for a generic, "there's a phone number" thing. However, I was helping my mom with some online genealogy last weekend and she came across the phone book listing for the house she lived in in 1948. I'm afraid I was washed away on a sea of excessive authenticity.

In that case, my character would still take off and fine a phone somewhere else other than his immediate neighborhood in which to call, given he's a touch spooked by the feds looking for him.

Edit: Also, it is *really* hard to find concrete evidence on how you actually used phones back then. Tell you all about the way the switchboards were built. But actually using them? Too insignificant to bother with.